Books I've Read Recently

In the last 4 months, no one has asked me what I've read recently. Taking this as a sign of interest, here's a list of books that I've read "recently": (let's hope I can still remember what they're all about)

What Do You Care What Other People Think? by Richard Feynman
This is the "sequel" to Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman and has more crazy tales from the life of Richard Feynman. In as much as neither one of these books as a plot, I put "sequel" in quotes. This book is a bit less funny than the first, because relatively large sections of it are devoted to telling the story of meeting, courting and marrying his first wife who died of TB just a year or two after their marriage, as well as a lengthy section about Dr. Feynman's time on the committee investigating the Challenger disaster. Neither of those topics are very funny. But the book is still good, which is why I own it and have read it more than once.

Seabiscuit: An American Legend by Laura Hillenbrand
This book was big when it came out, and they made a movie of it, so you're probably aware of it. I'd always resisted reading it, because I'm not interested in horse racing. But Shannon read it, and if it makes her interested in horse racing, it must be pretty good. It's a classic "sports movie". An unsung also-ran who is discounted for physical flaws and a cranky disposition proves everyone wrong by winning all the races. About two thirds of the way in, I felt that it got bogged down with long sections that all seemed to say, "they went to such-and-such track and got ready to race, but it rained, so they didn't race and instead went to some-other track, but it rained there, too." It must have been a very rainy year. Also, I was shocked to learn that horse racing isn't fair at all, because they load the horses with different amounts of weight in order to make it more competitive - because horse racing isn't about who is the fastest, it's about gambling. Hillenbrand's second book, Unbroken, is better, so read that one first.

Perfect Rigor by Masha Gessen
This is a nerd book about a Russian mathematician, Grigori Perelman, who solved a very significant problem, didn't formally publish it, and then dropped off the face of the earth. You've never heard anything about this because:

1. When I say "very significant" I mean "very significant if you have a Ph.D. in math."
2. No one cares about really high levels of math

To spoil the ending a bit (it's obvious as you read the book) super math geniuses have higher rates of autism, and Dr. Perelman is among them, so it doesn't get along with other people super well.

Gatefather by Orson Scott Card
Chalk up another trilogy for OSC that starts well enough, but becomes less interesting as it goes on. (see also: Pathfinder). In this one, OSC manages to find a few pages to have his characters discuss his views on the importance of nuclear families with children for the carrying on of society. Oh wait, you're saying that all of his books do that now . . . ?

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J.K. Rowling
I read this aloud to the girls. It's a lot of pages and I read almost all of them. Shannon reads a lot more books with the girls, so it was fun to have this one for my own, so to speak. And speak I did, until my voice nearly gave out at times. Also, I don't have a very good Hagrid voice. But my Hermione is spot on. The movies are too scary for the girls, and the books are certainly too hard for Ella (and possibly to scary for Julia to read on her own right before bedtime), so we figured that as series starts to have a lot more death, we'll be doing more reading out loud. Don't tell the girls yet, but I think for Ella's birthday I'll start reading the next one with them.

44 Scotland Street by Alexander McCall Smith
This book was first published serially in a newspaper - which used to be very common 100+ years ago. As a result, the chapters are very short, and nearly all of them have something happen, though it often isn't very much. The main character is a young girl who is taking a second gap year and moves into an apartment at #44 Scotland Street. The book follows her interactions with her roommate, neighbors and work at a small art gallery. It's not terribly exciting, it's mostly just life.

Morning Star by Pierce Brown
Book three of the "Hunger Games in Space" trilogy. More scheming, fighting, betrayal and killing. You'll be shocked to know that the protagonist wins in the end.

A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson
This is a fantastic book which covers the history of all the natural sciences over the last few hundred years as a means to appreciate the world in which we live. It covers physics, chemistry, geology and biology from the perspective of Mr. Bryson who is an expert on none of these topics. As usual with his writing, he always manages to insert interesting personal tidbits about all of the colorful characters involved in the history of science. You should read this book.

Trigger by Arthur C. Clarke and Michael P. Kube-McDowell
Yes, that Arthur C. Clarke and no, I have no clue who Michael P. Kube-McDowell is. This is a sci-fi novel written in 1999 and set in the present/near future. A research scientist accidentally discovers a relatively cheap devise that acts as a "trigger" to set off all ammunition and bombs within a certain range. Essentially it creates the ultimate "gun free zone". As you can imagine, it then heads into the political sphere and the book becomes heavily focused on gun rights debates. The book was suggested to me by a co-worker and it is sadly a continuously relevant topic. I enjoyed the book, and I'm sure it didn't help it's cause that it largely fits my view on the topic which is succinctly summed up by the book as: "we can do better".

Our Souls at Night by Kent Haruf
This is the story of an elderly man and woman who begin a relationship. It's short, it's well written. It doesn't have a whole lot of plot, nor does it have a single quotation mark, though the novel is mostly dialogue. I read this in 3 or 4 sittings - it's only 192 pages and they go quickly - so it's engaging enough to keep me interested for that period of time, but it's very much another story of "here are some people, life happens to them". Nothing in this would make the newspaper, even in the small town of Holt, Colorado.

Map Skills Revisited

When Julia was 19 months old, she was a country finding master. She could find dozens of countries on a map, and it is super cute to listen to her tiny little voice say the names of the countries.

Tonight, I re-tested her on these same countries, to see how Julia the 8-year-old stacks up against her former self. Let's just say that she hasn't kept up her skills. It's a bit trickier now that she can read, but I ran through the same countries as in the video and only gave her a second or two to find the country. This same map has been on our wall for basically her entire life, and she still managed to find China, Kazakhstan, Turkey, Madagascar, Italy, Iceland, Mexico, Australia, Japan, Iran, India, Sweden, Germany, Norway, Canada, Brazil, USA, France, Russia, UK, Greenland, Philippines and Peru.

Not so fortunate to be remembered, however, were Mongolia, Greece, South Africa, Cote D'Ivoire, Chile, Sri Lanka, Switzerland, Egypt and New Zealand. For many of those it was evident that she had no clue where to even begin looking on the map. I guess it's rough when your dad is blogging about how you peaked in life at 19 months.

DC Trip, Day 6 & 7

Day 6: Shenandoah National Park, Harper's Ferry

Saturday we loaded up the car and started for home the long way. A 2 hour drive took us to Shenandoah National Park, which is essentially a single road that winds through the "peaks" of the Shenandoah mountains. The park is 100 miles long or something like that, and we were only able to see the northern third, but it was very pretty. Though the mountains aren't particularly high, they still have a decent prominence over the surrounding area, so you can forget that you're barely over 3,000 feet up. We took in some vistas and went on a pair of short hikes, because the park includes part of the Appalachian Trail.

 Pretty panoramic views

The AT is over 2,100 miles long and runs from Georgia to Maine, and if I ever have enough money to take weeks and months off of work, I'd love to go hike a lot of it. But for now, we settled on two hikes of roughly a mile a piece. Neither hike went anywhere particularly noteworthy, but they were pretty. Between the first two hikes, we saw a black bear and cub from our car. Then, on our second hike, we met this guy about 30 yards ahead of us on the trail:

 A very average bear

Coincidentally, this is also the point where Shannon declared that it was time to turn around and go back. I reluctantly agreed. The bear just wandered briefly across the trail and continued on into the woods without ever giving any indication that he was interested in us at all.

 Me on the AT (the white line on the tree is how the AT is marked)

We left Shenandoah (and it's very disappointing visitor's center and gift shop) to head for our last new state of the trip - West Virginia. We went to Harper's Ferry, which is on the point of WV that sticks the furthers East. It's historically significant as a great place to cross the Shenandoah before it joins the Potomac which made it strategically important in the civil war. It was also the site of John Brown's raid in 1859, which aimed to start a slave revolt and was quickly put down by Colonel Robert E. Lee. We hiked around a bit where the civil war cannons were placed, but didn't go into town where the restored buildings are. The hike turned out to be very hot and humid and (say it with me) we were getting very tired.

Before leaving town, we did head to the Appalachian Trail Headquarters, which is in Harper's Ferry. It's a little bit ironic because West Virginia only has 4 miles of the trail itself, but that's where it is. We looked around for a few minutes, enjoyed the air conditioning, I bought a hat and a key chain and we continued on to our hotel in the Pittsburgh area.


Day 7: Not the John Johnson Farm and Driving Home

A few years ago we went to Kirtland and made the trip to Hiram to see the John Johnson farm. As it's a half hour or so from all the other church history sites in the area, I don't think too many people visit there. As a result, we had a tour all to ourselves. The missionary couple there gave us a private tour and were thoughtful enough to have one do the talking while the other would hang back to keep an eye on our girls (who would have been about 5 and 3 at the time) to make sure they didn't get in too much trouble. This let us pay a little bit more attention to the tour. They also did a good job of fitting the tour to our interest level and time constraints.

Fast forward to the present, and we figured that since it was a Sunday and we weren't going to church, we could make the detour on the way home to stop by the John Johnson Farm and have it be our "church" for the day. It was something like 20 minutes of extra driving, and we planned to get there right about 11:30 when they opened. Surely no one would be there at 11:30 on a Sunday, right?

Wrong. When we got there, there was an entire youth conference there. Somewhere on the order of 100 kids and leaders. We walked up to the home and the missionary told us that we were welcome to join in the tour, or we could wait 40 minutes until the current group was through. We hung out in the garage area where they were giving general background about church history, doctrine and revelations that happened in Hiram, and it was clear that this wasn't the tour for us. And we could see that this was going to be a 40 minute long fireside-like doctrinal lesson with 50 strangers. None of those are bad things. It was not, however, what we needed: an empty, time-flexible tour with the ability to connect with our children, to keep them engaged. On that tour they would have struggled to see anything, understand much, and keep quiet enough to be curteous to others.

So, we bailed. After using the bathrooms there, of course. It was a little frustrating, and a little bit ironic.

Beyond that, the drive home was pretty uneventful. Some rain. Lots of driving. We got home around 5:30, which never happens when we go on trips, because we're usually completing a 2 day, 20 hour drive back from Utah. So instead of falling into bed and leaving everything to deal with the next day, we actually unpacked, started a load of laundry, put the suitcases away, had dinner (pancakes) and got to bed at a decent time. It was kind of amazing. (And good, because I got to come right back to 3 very long days at work.)

So, there you have it. We went to DC, walked everywhere and saw everything.

DC Trip, Day 5

Day 5: Natural History Museum, Ford's Theatre, American History Museum

This was the day where we started to hit the vacation wall. We were fully aware that we had lots of things we could go see, but the will to see them was wearing thin from exhaustion. I still dragged myself out of bed to run (slower and shorter than the other days), but when I got back, everyone was still in bed asleep. We finally got going and drove in to the city. It turns out that with 4 people, driving is both faster and cheaper in DC. It's also more flexible and probably requires less walking. So, my advice is that if you've got a family, treat the metro as a tourist attraction, and ride it if you want to do it for "fun", but not primarily as an efficient transportation method.

Our first stop was to the Natural History Smithsonian, selected primarily for it's proximity to Ford's Theatre, where we had 12:00 tickets. It turns out the museums don't even open until 10:00, so it was perfectly fine that we didn't get there until 9:56. We saw the Hope Diamond and other sparkly gems, which the girls enjoyed. They were less interested in looking at animal bones, but we did spend some time in the human evolution section, after opting to not spend twenty something bucks to go into their butterfly house. We learned once more that Julia doesn't like mummies, and made sure we got out of there with enough time for a snack before walking a few blocks to Ford's Theatre.

Rubicon sapphire on displace at the Smithsonian

Ford's Theatre (which is apparently how they spell it) is owned by the National Park Service, but still functions as a theater (which is how I spell it). It's free to go in, but you have to purchase tickets a head of time, where you pay all sorts of fees (convenience fee, processing fee, ordering fee, it's a bit ridiculous) that effectively make them five bucks a piece. There's a museum in the basement, and then they let you into the theater to just walk around in what they call a "self guided tour". (There's no tour, it's just you walking around a theater.) The box where Lincoln was shot is decorated up just like it would have been that night and they don't let you in there, but other than that it's just a theater. It also gives some time to ponder why you would want to watch a play from above and to the side of the actors. I've never done it, but the box really is on top of the stage, which is why Booth easily jumped down that way. (The jump was easy, the landing not so much.)

  The view of the Presidential Box

The view of the view of the Presidential Box

After stopping to watch a street performer bang on some buckets and garbage cans, we headed across the street to the Petersen House, where Lincoln died. (The drumming was pretty good, but it started to loose its luster when you walked by a bit later and started to catch on that he only had 30 seconds worth of beat that was just repeated over and over.) The Petersen House is just three rooms to walk through, and then you go through a museum which covers Booth's flight and some of Lincoln's legacy.

Next, we walked a few blocks back to the US History Smithsonian. By this point, I was way too tired to take pictures of anything. But we got to see dresses from all the first ladies (more interesting than I feared), a revolutionary war gun boat, Dorothy's ruby slippers, a Sun Stone from the Nauvoo Temple, the Star Spangled Banner and Julia Child's kitchen. And the only thing I took a picture of was George Washington in a toga.

George, bringing fire from Mount Olympus, just after climbing out of Zeus' head.

In my defense, you aren't allowed to take pictures of the Star Spangled Banner, and Ella was really done with museums, so I had to sit with her while Julia and Shannon explored more things. I tried to hover around the Sun Stone to see if random visitors would say anything interesting about it, but it was mostly over looked. Also, I have learned that while a lot of art is much better in person, George Washington in a toga is, if anything, weirder in person.

We went to District Taco for dinner, which roughly Cafe Rio-like, and then headed back to the hotel. In all, Day 5 was about 4 hours and 6 miles shorter than day 4, which was very much welcome.

DC Trip, Day 4

Day 4: National Zoo, White House and ALL THE MONUMENTS

Buckle up, because this is going to get long.

We started the day walking a block from our hotel to the bus stop for some real life, big city, mass transit adventure. The girls (and all of us, really) have limited experience with mass transit, so it sounded fun. The bus went right past the Marine Corps War Memorial (the statue of the Marines putting the flag up), which we probably wouldn't have seen otherwise. We got off the bus, walked a block to the metro station, (figured out how the metro worked) and took it just 2 stops before getting out and walking a half dozen blocks to get to the zoo.

I love zoos, and would happily have spent the entire day there, but Shannon wisely kept us to only seeing the northern third of zoo. Things started off a bit slow. Sloth Bear exhibit: no animals. Clouded Leopard: motionless pile of fur in the back. Fishing cat: no animals. Japanese Giant Salamander: off exhibit. Asian Small Clawed Otters: lump of motionless fur in a log. Panda yard 1: empty. Panda yard 2: empty. Panda yard 3: empty. The red panda was the first indication that this zoo actually had any living animals.

Official mascot of the National Zoo

We then went inside to see the Pandas, and found them there sleeping, though they were stirring enough to convince me that they were real. Then we went to see some bison, cheetahs, gazelles and things, ugly birds (vulture and Abyssinian hornbills) and Asian elephants. The bird section was nice, with some nice ducks, big flightless guys of all varieties, flamingos and cranes. The girls were excited to see the flamingos, and the picture also shows off their stuffed panda souvenirs, and I learned that Shannon is a much bigger fan of cranes than I ever knew.

Flamingos, Pandas and Turkeys

We decided to make another pass by the pandas on our way out of the zoo, and were well rewarded for our efforts. Just as we were walking past one of the outdoor areas, one of the pandas came walking out and sat down in good view and started eating. All in all, the zoo was nice, the signs were decent, but the map of the zoo isn't all that detailed.

White House
All too soon, it was time to leave and walk the half dozen blocks back to the metro to ride it back to the Mall area. A few stops later and we got to walk a hand full of blocks to the White House. Honestly, I thought the girls would be more excited to see the White House, but they only needed a 5 second glance and were ready to move on.

Washington Monument
The Washington Monument is so photogenic, that both times I've been to DC, I find myself taking pictures of it from close up, from across the tidal basin, from Arlington, from the WWII memorial, from Lincoln. Pretty much from anywhere it's visible - and it's visible from just about everywhere. And even someone like myself that doesn't really enjoy photography at all can't stop taking pictures of it. We did not get tickets to go up inside.

Tidal Basin
Because we're cool parents, we rented a paddle boat and paddled around the tidal basin for an hour. I think the girls really enjoyed it, and it gave them a nice long break from all the walking we had already done. The highlight of the ride was definitely at the end when a duck swam over to us, and then hopped onto the back of the boat right next to the girls. She road with us for a minute or two and then hopped back into the water. Shannon got some pictures, which I'll let her share.

Jefferson Memorial
After some overpriced food, we continued our walk over to the Jefferson Memorial. We tried at the various stops to talk to the girls about what these people did that merit a monument - maybe some of it stuck. I gave Ella a nickle there and she was excited about that, at least.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial
FDR was next. I didn't see this when I was in DC years ago, and didn't realize how large it is. It follows his presidency chronologically, and we went through it backwards, death -> WWII -> Great Depression. I thought it was very nice. Julia and Ella stood in the bread line, and I thought they did an excellent job looking tired and hungry. I was also struck by the quotes about war and poverty, and how I could never imagine certain people running for president today every saying anything as noble or eloquent (ahemtrumpcough).

 "The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little."

Martin Luther King, Jr Memorial
We had seen MLK from the boat, so we didn't linger too long. It's interesting trying to explain segregation and racism to little kids who clearly have no notion these things.

DC War Memorial
A little memorial for people from DC who served in WWI.

Korean War Memorial
My legs and fingers are getting tired just thinking about this day again. Korea was next - we kept Ella from going after any of the money in the little pool there.

Lincoln Memorial
This was a pretty Lincoln heavy trip (Gettysburg address, memorial, Ford's Theater) and we live in Illinois so the girls were pretty up on who he was. I think what left the bigger impression on me was that they have the spot marked on the steps there where MLK delivered his "I have a Dream" speech.

Vietnam Memorial
The Vietnam Memorial is so simple, and yet so powerful. I feel bad for whoever designed the Korean Memorial, because they got upstaged. And yet, I apparently didn't take any pictures of it. Let's just say I was "living in the moment", and not "worrying whether Ella would make it to the bathroom in time".

Signers of the Declaration of Independence Memorial
On an island in pond on the north side of the reflecting pool there is a memorial to the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence. Both times I've been there, I've had the impression that it isn't visited very often, which made it a good spot to stop and have a snack while Shannon and I looked at the names. Sadly, we could only see about 52 of them, because there was a couple there (on a date?) sitting on the names of some of the signers. It seems like there must be a bench somewhere in that city that those two could have used to sit and talk without planting their rear ends on someone's signature.

WWII Memorial
Finally, we made it back around to the WWII Memorial.

Reflecting Pool
I forced us to make a last minute detour past the reflecting pool on our way out, because we'd skirted around it all afternoon without ever really seeing it. The East end of it was closed off for construction stopping us from getting any end on shots, but this was more about checking it off the list before heading home.

Still smiling, miraculously.

Finally, we had to walk to the metro station (tears of exhaustion were finally shed by someone who had just walked too far that day), get on the train, then wait for us bus which dropped us off, thankfully, right across the street from our hotel at 9:30pm or so - a very long day. I estimate that we all walked between 8 and 8.5 miles over the course of the day. The girls were extremely impressive troopers through it all.

DC Trip, Day 3

Day 3: Library of Congress, US Capitol, Air and Space Museum

Because I'm a boss, I got up before 6 every day we were in DC, went to a nearby park and ran 5 or 6 miles. This is where I learned that no one on those paths in the morning likes to make eye contact - but I stubbornly said 'hi' to the majority of the people I passed each of those days. I'm sure I started a chain reaction of friendliness and some sociologist 3 years in the future will write a paper about this mysterious change. Also, I learned how it is that farmers got up so early back in the day: they lived in one room homes with their kids, so they had to go to bed when their kids did. Going to bed at 9:30 sure makes it easier to get up at 5-something.

For our first full day in DC we drove in to the city, parked our car (for about half what I expect to pay to park for a day in Chicago) and headed for the East end of the Mall. First, we went to the Library of Congress. In planning our trip we set up a spreadsheet with all the possible sights to see and everyone in our family ranked them to help in our down selecting and prioritizing. I'm totally certain that all families do this and we are not weird in any way. The Library of Congress was generally low on the list, thanks mostly to a very low rating from me. It turned out to be more interesting than I thought. It was also less interesting than the girls thought it would be. (For the record, the Young Readers Center is pretty much just the kids section of your public library. Except you drove 750 miles to get there.)

The Jefferson Building is very ornate and fancy, and a good reminder of how much we as a nation aspired to be so very Greek in our architecture. I guess it was the style at the time. We went on a tour of the building which showed a lot of the art work around the place, saw a Gutenberg bible, and Thomas Jefferson's book collection (which re-started the Library of Congress after the British burned down the first attempt).

We then headed for our tour of the US Capitol. Our Senator's office was nice enough to loan us an intern to take us on a tour. And, for a 20-year-old intern with 2 or 3 weeks experience, she actually did a pretty good job. The capitol dome is being restored (it seems like it was last time I was in DC, also) so there aren't great pictures of that, but it was good to see the inside of the building. I'm not always much of a picture taker, so you'll have to take my word for it that most of it is pretty. Among the more interesting things I learned is that the Supreme Court met in the Capitol building until the 1930s (see picture below), and that rather than pick an actual flower for decorations in the building, the politicians invented an imaginary flower, because then, as know, they can't actually agree on anything, no matter how trivial.

The day was hot, and we were quickly learning that the girls did not enjoy following tour guides around learning fascinating details like who was the model for this painting, and where did that former president sit when he was a senator. So, we decided to skip the Botanical Gardens and move on to the Air and Space Smithsonian.

The Smithsonian museums are terrific, free and completely packed by 8th graders. As you might be aware, about half the country ships their 8th graders to DC for a field trip every spring, and I'm sure there isn't a week between March and July that the place wouldn't be full of them. Really, they were pretty well behaved, but they sure could be both numerous and loud at times. Also, for as big of a nerd that I am, I don't actually get all that excited about airplanes and spaceships as you'd expect. But the girls had a good time poking at every single exhibit. I was too tired to take pictures, but we saw the Wright Bros. airplane, and moon rocks and other stuff.

The one picture I will share from the museum isn't so much to show off Ella's photography skills (need to work on those), or to showcase the cardboard cutouts of Orville and Wilbur, but to highlight Shannon's shirt, which was apparently a big political statement or something. She got comments from multiples strangers on the street, security guards and pretty much everyone. I wore a BYU shirt later in the week and got one comment. Pedro is, apparently, much more popular. (And the Brigham Young statue in the capitol is about as far into the corner as it can get.)

We returned to our hotel thinking we were tired. But we hadn't even scratched the surface of weariness.

DC Trip, Day 1 and 2

Eight years ago, I went to DC on a business trip and spent one afternoon and evening seeing the sights. I started blogging about it, and produced four separate blog posts detailing half the day, but never finished. Well, eight years later, we'll see if I can do better!

The trip this time was to be a bit more extensive - 7 days - and involved a whole heck of a lot more sights, as we plotted a course to take us to Gettysburg, DC, Shenandoah National Park and Harper's Ferry. The trip would include 8 total states plus DC. I'll cover the trip here one or two days at a time, depending on how loquacious I get.

Day 1: Drive to Gettysburg
There's not all that much to say about driving. It's nearly 11 hours from our house to Gettysburg, and we did it in about 12 total, because we're awesome like that. PB&J in the car for lunch, and we only stopped three times on the way, I think. Blockburger kids are genetically good at long car trips. No one in our family had ever been to Pennsylvania, so that was good to cross off the list.

Once we left the highway to head for Gettysburg, we got a little bit turned around, but in our meanderings we got to see an Amish-style horse cart going down the road, and go up and down some seriously steep mountain ridges. None of us had ever really been in the Appalachians before, and while they aren't terribly high or anything, they were still impressively steep in parts.

We made it to our hotel, which was not very fancy, even by our standards, and called it a night.

Day 2: Gettysburg, Cafe Rio and Arlington
Because Day 1 was pretty lame, and had no pictures, let's go right in to Day 2: Gettysburg. We're not huge Civil War buffs at our house, but we are pretty well versed on Gettysburg, because of "The Killer Angels" and it's film adaptation, Gettysburg. We even watched the whole 4 hour, 15 minute film with the girls before we went. (Ella didn't really care, but Julia seemed to like it.)

One thing that I didn't expect was that there are monuments and markers everywhere. Every regiment has put up a statue, or cannon or marker or something wherever they were engaged there, so the roads around the battlefields were literally lined with markers.

At Gettysburg you can literally pick up a tour guide in your car to explain the sites to you as you go, but we opted for the more flexible self-guided tour, where we could skip past things as quickly as we wanted when young attention spans were getting very short.

This is a picture of a monument to Virginians who fought there, fittingly with General Lee and Traveler on top. It sits near the start of Pickett's charge. Speaking of Pickett's charge . . . .

This is the "copse of trees" (dead center in the picture) as seen from the start of Pickett's charge. At the same time it is both a long way, and not that far, as you attempt to imagine walking that distance into the face of Union cannon.

We, of course, visited Little Round Top and found the marker for the 20th Maine (and didn't take a picture, but let me google that for you)

After Gettysburg, we drove through Maryland stopping for some food . . . .

And heading to Arlington National Cemetery. Arlington, started as the home of the Custis clan (decendents of Martha Washington), and Mary Custis married Robert E. Lee, and then during the Civil War the Union took the estate and turned it into a cemetery. It's all very interesting. (Shannon has a book suggestion for you, if you want to know more.)

At Arlington, we were able to see John F. Kennedy's grave:

The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and the changing of the guard there:

As well as tour the house and see the cemetery in general.

We then headed to our hotel in Arlington. It was one of those fancy hotels with the exfoliating towels. You know, the ones that remove dead (and living) skin when you dry yourself off after a shower?